HSS2000 The Making of Modern America 1865-1929
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
The decade of the 1920s witnessed the birth of much of what we consider _modern_ in the United States. Students in this intermediate Liberal Arts course will examine this decade, focusing on key developments: the decline of small town America and the mass appeal of the Ku Klux Klan; competing visions of Black Liberation and the art of the Harlem Renaissance; the emergence of modern gendered identities and their roles in the new economies of sex and work; the rise of LGBTQAI communities and the policing of those communities; the integration and later forced deportation of Mexican-Americans in the western U.S. We will use historical sources, among them film and fiction, to explore the currents of the twenties and draw connections to the social and political debates of the contemporary U.S.
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)